


if you find some love for these clowns (turn around)

by emullz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:03:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 14,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emullz/pseuds/emullz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>basically all the dumb stuff i have sitting around on my computer compiled into one big collection with a title from a vampire weekend song. </p><p>because who doesn't want to get their heart broken by bellarke every now and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clark Kent doesn't need coffee

**Author's Note:**

> so this happened. and it's gonna keep happening, i hope. anyways hmu on the media (officialbellarketrash (100 blog) or emullz (personal blog) on tumblr) and i hope you like the writing.

Clarke didn’t know why she always put her change in the tip jar. Sometimes it was because she didn’t have pockets, and sometimes it was because she had to go somewhere important and she couldn’t have the sound of jangling change follow her into a meeting, but most of the time it was a reflex action, something her father had taught her how to do long ago. Clarke could still hear him asking her “what’s a couple dollars to a brighter day?” as he clinked his coins into the jar. 

 

But she was finding it harder and harder to tip the barista who kept spelling her name wrong no matter how many times she spelled it out for him at the cash register. Either he was doing it out of spite or she kept stealing some guy named Clark’s coffee, and neither of those things were something Clarke wanted to deal with at 11:00 on a Wednesday night, especially not after a sixteen hour shift at the hospital. 

 

So, the next time Clarke slipped her usual couple of dollars into the tip jar, she nestled a small note in the folded bills. She’d spent twice as long as she was willing to admit on deciding what color ink to use, and even longer trying to achieve a casual yet authoritative handwriting. It simply read _sometimes Clarke is spelled with an E_. As usual, he’d asked for her name like a reflex action, obviously not listening as he bustled around behind the counter heating up her croissant and waiting for the milk to foam. Clarke went home nervously awaiting the backlash from her note and holding a cup that was, yet again, missing a letter. 

 

\- -

 

The next time Clarke came off the night shift, the dark haired barista didn’t even take her order, much less look her in the eye. All he did was slide her latte across the counter and recite the price with a hard edge to his voice. Clarke handed it over with whatever venom she could muster, given that she’d just helped out with an experimental brain surgery on a seventeen year old cancer patient and was a little bit dead on her feet. 

 

She didn’t even look at the cup until she was outside the coffeeshop, trying to zip her coat up against the cold while also putting her wallet back into her ridiculously small girl pockets. Once she was done, Clarke finally took a sip and looked apprehensively at the black sharpie. 

 

_Clarke,_ it read, _you spell your name stupid_

 

One glance over her shoulder told Clarke that the barista was looking at her through the window, even if he did look down just as she looked up. 

 

The next day, after work (where Clarke had decided that two could play at the barista’s game), Clarke ordered a mocha latte and slipped her note in with the tip. 

 

_I’ve met a lot of four year olds, and all of them can spell better than you._

 

Clarke’s next cup was Christmas-themed, something she looked forward to every year. What was written around the brim was a little less than charming, however.

 

_Clarke- why do you know so many four year olds? you always look disheveled enough to be a preschool teacher, but the under-eye bags say therapist_

 

Clarke bristled, and the next time she went into the café she ordered the most complicated drink she could think of, just to piss him off. Her note read, in all caps, _I’M A PEDIATRIC SURGEON, ASSHOLE_. It was taped to a penny, which she dropped into the jar with an audible clink. 

 

Clarke’s next cup was a large where she’d ordered a medium, and it didn’t even say her name, just _shit, sorry_. 

 

The next note Clarke left in the tip jar wasn’t a note, per se. It was a letter from a patient that Clarke had just had the pleasure of discharging the day before. The big red block letters read _thank you Doctor Clarke!_ Underneath, there was a picture of a stick figure with yellow hair and a stethoscope. _See?_ she’d written along the bottom. _Even four year olds can spell Clarke_.

 

This time, the barista pulled the note out of the jar before handing Clarke her coffee, reading it in front of the register with the smallest of smiles on his face. “You know,” he said, folding the note up and slipping it into the pocket of his apron, “I know a guy named Clark, and he spells it-“ 

 

“I know you’re talking about Superman,” Clarke interrupted, grabbing her coffee out of his hand. “And that isn’t a valid excuse, one reason being he isn’t real and the other being that he’s an alien, so he doesn’t understand the culture and that’s why it’s spelled wrong.” 

 

“I’m pretty sure his cultural confusion isn’t what led to the name Clark Kent, given that he was a baby when he crash landed, but I’ll give you this one pass. Just because you’ve obviously had a long day.” The barista held out one of the cookies Clarke had always eyed in the display case. “We throw them out at the end of the night, anyways.” 

 

The next day, when Clarke brought him a cookie from the hospital cafeteria, he was doubled over in laughter. “No wonder you always come here,” he said when he was done. “That looks one of Hagrid’s rock cakes.” 

 

“I also like being here,” Clarke muttered, her cheeks a little pink. 

 

“I like having you here. Just, next time, don’t slip one of these into the tip jar. Those fives were just fine.” Bellamy smiled, something Clarke knew from experience he didn’t do often.

 

She took the coffee he slid across the counter and studied it so not to look at his face. “We swap baked goods, we talk Harry Potter and comic books, and we’ve been passing notes like juveniles. I can’t keep calling you ‘Asshole Barista’ in my head.” 

 

“Next time you slip me a note, make it out to Bellamy.” 

 

_Bellamy- I had a great time last night. Next time, though, let me leave the tip. The waiter was cute and I’ve heard that’s a great way to meet guys._

 

 


	2. Letters For The End of The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bellamy writes clarke a bunch of letters, because the world ended and she's gone (this was angsty and i'm sorry)

#1 

It’s been three months. To some people, that might seem like a long time to wait, and it is, but you’ve come back from month long jaunts before, showing up with a suitcase and an apology and ten more stories to tell over the campfire. I always forgave you, because you were always helping people. Doctors Without Borders, the Peace Corps, I remember one time you went to build houses in Africa. And I know those were before we were us, and that you always said that I was it, that you met me and you didn’t think you’d ever move again, but you did, obviously. 

I think it took me so long to write because I’ve been thinking about what made you do it. Maybe you got called to find a cure, maybe you found someone you knew and ran off, and maybe you just got tired of being here, during the end of all things, and sitting around. But we were surviving. We lived through that first, awful month, and then I thought we were doing okay. You would laugh, sometimes. But here we are. You’re gone, and I’m sitting up at a desk writing a letter, asking why you’re such a jackass. Why you left me here with no warning, to live by myself and blame myself. 

But I could forgive you, maybe, if you showed up on what’s left of my doorstep in the pouring rain, begging for forgiveness and telling me you wrote me 365 letters, every day for a whole year (and if you were a hunky dude with really nice abs). I think we could make it work. 

So I’m hoping. Here’s to you, asshole. Thanks for leaving me in my time of dire need. Please call. 

#2

Hi. It’s me again. So I sent the last letter your way on the back of a guy who’s been going around trading lithium batteries in exchange for places to stay. It’s sort of like a bed and breakfast sort of deal, but he sleeps with one eye open and keeps the batteries in a locked safe that he tucks in his pants while he sleeps. I thought you’d find it funny, if you ever met him, so I thought maybe I’d mention it. He might’ve gone the complete opposite direction than you did, but I don’t think so. You’ve always had this inexplicable thing for the ocean. The waves, crashing on the beach. If you were going to go somewhere that wasn’t where you said you’d always stay, that’s where you’d go. Then again, I never thought you’d leave, so maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought.

But it’s also the end of all things, metaphorically and literally speaking. I don’t think I have a lot of room left for dignity. So I’m going to send out another letter, on the back of another person who comes wandering my way, and hope they find the right blonde to give this to. I told him the one with the feisty attitude and piercing stare. I hope he doesn’t give my innermost thoughts and feelings to some random blonde stranger. then again, maybe she’d come visit. Maybe I could finally get over you. 

I’m going to say again, though, that my type before you was always hard angled brunettes that didn’t appear to like me too much and were very flexible. The fact that we were madly in love and you couldn’t touch your toes makes this whole endeavor even harder. So, please, get this letter. Be somewhere in the known universe and not in a hole in the ground, choose to hate me rather than cease to be. And, maybe, come back. we can make it work. I kind of love you, still. I’m a little pathetic, but hey, it’s the end of the world. We’re all more flawed than we’d care to admit. 

 

#3

Hello again. I sent the last letter along with a woman who claimed she was working for the government. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to laugh in her face, and I won’t be the last. But she seemed like someone you’d like. You always did say that ladies in government were one of your weak points. You had a thing for power suits. 

Maybe she’ll make it to you, because you decided to help the government rebuild and didn’t take me because I’m a hopeless cynic and also you don’t get the least bit turned on by guys in smelly jeans playing president. Maybe that’s it. I’ll add that to my list of reasons you’re not sitting next to me roasting the last marshmallows on the planet. 

Someone will reach you, eventually. You’ll have letter number 7, or maybe even 23, and you’ll read it and feel like you started a TV show midseason because you missed out on all of the important stuff in the earlier ones, but, most importantly, you’ll know that I’m still here. I haven’t moved, not one single solitary inch, because I’ve just begun to put a lot of stock in first impressions, and that means you’re a stuck up asshole who would totally leave me all alone. 

Maybe, if you come back, we can pick up where we left off. maybe I don’t have to do this all alone. 

 

#7

Hi. The last letter went out with a guy named Timothy, who was carrying a six pack of beer with labelled dates on each cap and nothing else. He told me he survives grocery store to grocery store, and he found a lot of characters foraging in various Shop Rites across the country. He said he’d take a letter for a place to stay and a meal, and so maybe, next time you’re stocking up on canned peaches in the gutted remains of a Wal-Mart, you’ll get a letter and you’ll know that- I don’t know what you’ll know. If I was in your head I’d be standing next to you right now, and we’d be facing the end of days together, like we always said we would. 

Then again, you’d never be stupid enough to go looking in the major grocery stores for food. That, you always used to say with this rueful sort of grin, was where the perverts camped out. I sometimes have trouble remembering the slope of your mouth, after you’d tell a joke, and it scares me. You were always the one who could draw, and my likeness is cluttered in all the margins of the books we salvaged, my hands framing Dickens and my freckles dotting across the chapter titles of Winnie The Pooh. But you never drew yourself, not the way I remember you. standing with a grease stain across your forehead after you got the car running again, looking like you’d just tamed a lion, all triumphant eyes and tired shoulders. Humming while you packed everything we had in the world into the canvas backpack. Falling asleep in the passenger’s seat, your hair blowing around in the space where the glass became shards. 

Timothy said he’d get this to you, he promised it as “a collector of lost souls.” He and I opened the beer labelled “for when I get another purpose” and we shared it. His boyfriend had died a long time ago, before all of this. He’d only just started to be himself again. His parting words to me were, “you know what’s ironic? Hunter only ever drank scotch.”   
So, I hope you get this letter. I hope Timothy shares a beer with you, and I hope you decide to come find me. 

 

#17

That last letter is going to come on the back of a woman who’s been looking for someone, too. She said that now she was twice as likely to successfully find someone, and of course she’d take along a letter.

I’m starting to gather a bit of a reputation. I’m known as a safe haven, around these parts. Word’s been spread, around the travelers, that I’m a good place to stay if you haven’t got anywhere else. all you have to do is take a letter. They call me the post office. I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t a pipe dream anymore. Maybe, instead of just going about my business and thinking about you in every spare second I have, I can do something real. I can stop sitting around and waiting for death. I can be the kind of guy you’d want to stick around for. I can give a letter to a woman who’s been looking for months, give her a little piece of hope that says, maybe you won’t find what you’re looking for, but you can sure as hell help someone else. 

You know where to find me, if you get this. And if you forget, just ask for the post office. Maybe someone can give you directions. 

 

#23

Business has been booming. And by business, I mean I’ve seen two people in the last month, which is more than I’ve seen in a year. I write these letters, and they used to sit around for a couple months until I found someone to carry them around, but this one was written the night before it’s sent out into the world. It’s crazy, to think that there’s six of these roaming around, looking for you. I’m sending this one with a woman named Bryce, who used to be a tennis instructor and now she’s on a recon mission for this little group of people she’s accumulated. She’s looking for a power source, to charge all of their phones so they can look at the old pictures they have. She took it on, she told me, because she’s not qualified to do anything else in a world like this. It sounds a lot like the stuff I used to say to you, the kind of thing that made you so mad at me. You being an almost doctor and me being an awkward guy with a degree in classics made us a very lopsided pair when the world went to shit. You had lives you could be saving, and all I’ve ever had is a head full of myths, and when everyone was dying and nobody had time for stories. All I can do was talk. 

So I liked Bryce. She said she wanted to repay me, that she was tired of taking kindness and never giving anything in return, and I know what that’s like. So I’m writing this, all in a rush, for a tennis instructor with an inferiority complex. And, wherever you are, whether it’s saving lives or running away, take this letter. Make Bryce feel like she’s worth it like you did for me. 

 

#25

I found a bag of Cheetos yesterday. Remember how I used to hoard them around the house, so nobody else could eat them but me? Turns out I stuck one in the inside pocket of one of my old backpacks, and I’ve been carrying it around for three years. I ate it as soon as I found it, of course, sort of like a “fuck you” to all the rationing that’s been happening since we realized that the end of days wasn’t a hoax. I didn’t portion them out one Cheeto a day because that’s even worse than having ten blissful minutes of savoring every bite. The reason that Cheetos are good is because they get better as you go. The cheese gets less overwhelming, and you can suddenly focus on the nuances, the way it crunches and then sort of melts in your mouth. With one Cheeto a day, the magic goes away. You gotta eat, like, a million. 

Anyways, that’s it. I found some Cheetos. It was kinda magical. 

 

#28

Remember that time the power went out for two days? And you said that all normal life had to stop when the power went out, so we had to build a pillow fort and put all our frozen food outside in the snow, but only after eating all the ice cream? 

That was after the period of hate and before the one of love, the part where we were friends and I was just getting to know you, and you came over because your roommate was driving you insane, but then there was an ice storm and everything shut down and you were stuck with this guy you only knew a little and the power was out. And all you did was eat cold Chef Boyardee with me and teach me how to make candles out of crayons. 

I miss that. 

 

#31

The person who gives you this letter is gonna ask you some questions. You should know the answers, because they’re important and if you don’t remember I don’t want you to have the letters anyways. In my new, way station sort of business, I give out the letter and I give out the answers. The questions, they tell me, are circulating by word of mouth. If you can answer them, they send you to the nearest person who’s heard about my little Post Office, and then from there you bounce around until you can find a letter. There’s only 31 of them, so that might take some time, but you’ll get there. And then, once you tell the person carrying it that your favorite game is Trivial Pursuit and you love Vegetable Lo Mein but you can’t use chopsticks, and that you once shot an attempted robber with a BB gun, they’ll hand it to you. It might be a little stained, and the envelope might be a little open, but chances are it’ll still be legible. 

Read it, please. It might tell you about some people who’ve come to visit me, and it might tell you about my day, or maybe it’ll tell you how much time I’ve spent hating you, but I want you to read it, and I want you to come home. It’s taken me a while, and I’ve met a lot of people, but I’m starting to realize that this isn’t a shot in the dark anymore. I can’t kid myself and think that there isn’t any chance these will find you, I can’t send them out into the world without knowing what they mean. 

What they mean is that I need you. Plain and simple. So answer the questions, read the letter, and come home. 

 

#45

There’s around forty of these, I think, roaming the world. Someone comes to the Post Office about once a month, sometimes more. It’s been such a long time since you left, I’m not really even writing these to you anymore. I mean, that’s the idea, that people will take them, and they’ll go their separate ways, and they’ll find you hidden in some corner of the world that’s left. But I’m not looking anymore, I don’t think. I remember saying, way back around the first couple of letters, that you’d get number fifteen or something and have no idea the references I’m making, because it’s like you’ll be coming into a show during the middle of an episode. But I wrote you a letter, it must have been about a year and a half ago, and it was pretty much me begging you with everything I had to come back. 

It’s been too long. I’m not waiting for you anymore. And that took me a while to realize, I think, because I’d been searching for so long. And before that it was just a way to convince myself that you weren’t dead. But I’m certain now, that you’re either dead or you’re never coming back, and I think that’s okay. I’m going to keep sending out letters, because that gives other people hope more than it does for me at this point. But they aren’t going to be for you. Not anymore.

I still miss you. I’ll always miss you. But it's different, now that it's been so long. I miss the idea of you, the idea of having someone by my side right now. I miss having good times with you in a time when the world wasn’t in pieces at my feet. But I don’t need you to survive, not like I used to. I haven’t for a long time. So if you’re really out there, and you get this, write me or don’t write me. I’m right here, and I don’t think I’ll ever move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so anyways thanks for reading. this wasn't originally written for bellarke (hence the lack of pronouns). i mean i sort of had them in mind, and they were in the endgame, so to post it i fiddled around with the plot and made the whole doctor vs. classics guy thing and added the blonde part. i hope it's ok, because it's something that i'm sort of proud of (although i will admit it's pretentious) 
> 
> i hope u liked it!!


	3. nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> octavia leaves the nest, bellamy is the dad that he's always been meant to be, and i finally use that one line that i found on a tumblr post and have been saving since last year.

The day that Bellamy watched Octavia’s beat up Chevy drive away from her apartment for the last time, something inside of him broke. The box of things Octavia had tried to throw away rested heavy in his arms, and the circle of his friends around him passed around beer, chatting amicably. Bellamy’s throat was too dry to do much more than close up tight.

Clarke’s hand descended on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. “She’s going to be okay, you know.” 

“I’m not worried about her,” Bellamy said, the words barely escaping his throat. Clarke directed a puzzled look at his back, at the tight lines of his shoulders. He didn’t speak until the car was out of sight and Clarke had driven him home in her considerably nicer VW, until they were idling in front of his apartment building. It was the same one he’d had since Octavia was born, the one with the closet that they’d shoved a crib into and made a bedroom, the one with Octavia’s height etched into the doorframe at every stage of her life. 

“She’ll be okay,” Clarke said again, after she couldn’t hold it in anymore. 

“And I said that it’s not her I’m worried about,” Bellamy snapped, jerking out of his seatbelt and practically storming out of the car. 

“Hey-“ Clarke called from the car, putting it in park and fumbling with the keys, trying to make it to his door before he could lock himself in. “Bell!”

Bellamy turned around on the sidewalk, one hand tugging at his hair. “Don’t call me that. Not today.” 

They walked up the stairs together, Bellamy stomping heavily and Clarke practically sprinting to keep up, taking the stairs two at a time, breathing to heavily to say anything at all. When they got into his apartment, Bellamy set down his cardboard box and Clarke managed to say in between puffs of air, “I’m telling you, she’s going to be okay-“ 

“I know that!” Bellamy roared. “Don’t you think I know that’s she’s independent, and strong, and everything that I wanted her to be? She’s fantastic, she knows what she wants, she’ll be a million times better than okay in Boston!” 

“Then what is this about?” It came out harsher than Clarke meant it, and Bellamy took it that way. 

“Have you noticed that your way of reassuring me is to tell me that _Octavia _is okay? Not that things will get better, or that everything will work out, but that _she _will be fine. She was my everything since the day she was born, and I don’t think I’ll be okay. That’s what this is about.” Bellamy kept his head bent over the box on the table, pulling out medals from high school track meets and rolled up boy band posters.____

____Clarke took a step forward. “Is there anything I-“_ _ _ _

____And it was like a bomb exploded in the room the way Bellamy let what he was holding drop onto the wood of the coffee table and whirled around to face Clarke. “The only thing that kept me from falling to pieces was the thought that I’d be waking up next to you, and then watching Octavia drive away- you’re going to leave, someday, you’re going to get a great job and you’re going to realize all of your dreams and they’re going to take you away from me, and I’m not going to sit here and let you help with this when I know that when you leave, it’s going to be a million times worse.”_ _ _ _

____When Bellamy stopped yelling, the entire world fell silent. The only thing Clarke could hear was the ragged way he breathed, each rise and fall of his chest the center of her vision. She teetered on the verge of stepped forward, rocking onto her toes, her hands clenched into fists at her side._ _ _ _

____“I just don’t think,” he finished, all the fight gone out of his voice, “that I can let you be everything if I could lose you.”_ _ _ _

____“Let’s be nothing,” Clarke said, and Bellamy’s eyes finally rose to hers. “I heard that lasts forever.”_ _ _ _

____“Nothing?”_ _ _ _

____Clarke refused to let Bellamy break eye contact. “Yeah, nothing. You lose everything, you’re left with me. Sound good?”_ _ _ _

____And then there was Bellamy’s smile, and he was nodding, and Clarke’s face was buried in his jacket._ _ _ _

____And when Bellamy proposed a year later, he got down on one knee and he showed her an empty box, because they were nothing, and they were going to last forever._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah that happened. it was quick and idk really what it is, but i hope you like it anyways. sorry this is angsty.


	4. cause i'm in love with you, and that's the way it goes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> heyyy a west wing au where clarke is zoe bartlet and bellamy is charlie and they are so mean to each other whenever clarke is in the residence and yet they somehow manage to fall in love anyways (changed a lil cause i know nothing about the white house while still managing to be west wing trash) 
> 
> OR
> 
> the west wing au you didn't know you needed until now

Bellamy Blake took the job as Primary Aide to the President instead of going to college because they told him it payed well and he was trying to keep his and Octavia’s heads above water. He’d always been fascinated with history, and it often started in the White House, so he’d assumed that he wouldn’t be bored at work too often, which was an added bonus. 

What Bellamy didn’t anticipate was something that the job description conveniently left out: being the official wrangler of the First Daughter. It had started out mostly awful, Bellamy trying to drag her places she didn’t want to be and taking an incredible amount of insults lying down for the sake of a salary. He said “ma’am” a lot, and tried to maintain some shred of professional dignity, but Clarke always managed to tear that down. 

“I don’t like people who work for my mother,” she’d announce, her nose in the air. When Bellamy would tell her practically the whole world worked for the President, she’d roll her eyes. “Your point?” 

She would disappear before important White House events and turn up in paint spattered jeans instead of the black embroidered dress the Press Secretary had told the newspapers she’d be wearing, she called reporters on the phone and made comments on every single story that broke, she spray painted the sides of buildings with her friends at night and signed her name at the bottom. It was like she was doing everything she could to make his job a living hell, and he fell for it hook, line, and sinker. 

Bellamy almost got fired for telling her she could kiss his ass, and when she walked out of the Oval Office that night she growled “I’m wearing heels tonight in exchange for your job, make sure its worth it” in his ear. From that point on, President Griffin didn’t seem to like him much. When she hired a new aide to “take some responsibilities off of his plate,” nobody was surprised. They were all, however, a bit shell shocked when they learned that everything but Clarke had been assigned to the new guy. 

The next time he asked Clarke if she needed anything, the answer was “blister bandaids and a noose, please.” He complied with half of her requests and helped her out of the ridiculously and needlessly high heels and onto the floor. Each shoe left a bloody smear running down her foot, and each time Bellamy watched for a flinch, or a sigh, or any sign that she was bleeding openly. The insults flew out of her mouth without pause, and the pain didn’t even register on her face. Bellamy handed over the bandaids. 

At the office, they called him The Nanny, and at home they called him The Royal Nurse, and it sucked, but for some reason he could never manage to quit his job. As much as Clarke managed to make his life living hell by wearing converse to the State of the Union Address and never showing up on time, the brightest part of his day was when she caught his eye during press conferences and stuck her finger down her throat. 

He’d been working for the President for two years, and exclusively Clarke for one, when Abby Griffin won a second term and Clarke announced she was going to college and she wanted to take Bellamy with her. 

“It’s just Georgetown,” she said, rolling her eyes half at her mother and half at Bellamy. “And its not like you weren’t expecting this.” 

“You want to take Bellamy?” Abby asked incredulously, and Bellamy was a little glad he didn’t have to ask that question. 

“You’re the one who hired him to tame me,” Clarke said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And he’s getting so proficient, it would be a shame to fire him.” 

Nobody could argue, and so Bellamy went to all of Clarke’s classes and walked her to her dorm after parties and helped her drunkenly fit her key into her door, and he fell in love with her somewhere along the way. He wasn’t sure if it was when she insisted he accompany her to all of her Classics classes because of a “creepy looking guy” in the second row because she knew he’d love all of the lectures or when she called him at three in the morning because she needed tampons and chocolate but she didn’t have a car, or any of the other thousands of moments he spent getting paid to hang out with his best friend. 

And at the same time Clarke grew into the world, the world grew into Clarke. Overnight, it seemed (though it was really over the four years Bellamy and Clarke spent at college), everyone began to adore Clarke and all of her mannerisms. Every time one of her outfits showed up on the People Magazine Snap Story, Bellamy sent it to her with a mustache drawn over her face. He’d get back both the middle finger emoji and the real thing, and he even got a punch to the gut when he emailed her the “Why We Love The First Daughter’s Rebellion” article on Buzzfeed. “people think your stupidity is cute???” was written in the subject bar. Clarke was not amused. 

By the time Bellamy Blake was done being the official wrangler of the first daughter, he still wasn’t sure why he’d actually taken the job in the first place. But, eight years later and helping Clarke pack up all of the high necked cocktail dresses she’d left in her closet when she moved out of the White House, listening to her laugh when she managed to color his hair pink with a leftover can of spray paint, he was more than okay with his choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. wrote this. didn't read it over. hope you like this shoddy attempt to get over my writer's block, please send me prompts on my tumblr (officialbellarketrash) or anywhere really i'm still tryna punch this writers block in the face. 
> 
> hope u like


	5. talk less, smile more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based on the prompt 'im sorry but your headphones are so loud i can hear them from here and just what the crap do you think youre listening to thats so two thousand and late’ (but hamilton because i am most definitely trash of the thing)

When Bellamy looks up from his textbooks to scowl at whoever’s music is playing so loud he can hear it two tables away, he doesn’t expect to see a tiny blonde girl scribbling madly with several different colored highlighters and looking like she’s ready to go to war. She’s bopping a little, and Bellamy almost doesn’t say something, but he has a test the next morning and he knows way less about ancient Japanese folklore than he should. 

He’s in the process of getting the girl’s attention when her headphones blare “EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR AMERICA’S FAVORITE FIGHTING FRENCHMAN” and he stops short. She doesn’t look up, and now she’s mouthing the words, and Bellamy watches as she raps Lafayette’s verse with stunning precision. He stands there awkwardly for another second until he decides that he’s being ridiculous and taps her on the shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts once she’s paused her music and is looking up at him expectantly. “But I could hear your music from where I was studying and it was kind of distracting, but when I got over here to ask you to turn it down you were lip syncing and I didn’t want to disturb you.” 

She blushes, from her cheeks all the way down her neck, and Bellamy has to stop his eyes from following the pink further. “Sorry it’s so loud, just trying to stay awake. Anatomy’s a bitch. I’ll turn it down.” 

Bellamy grins. “Don’t bother. I also have an unhealthy appreciation for Marquis de Lafayette’s contributions to the Revolutionary effort.” 

Her face brightens, and then she’s pulling out her earbuds to talk to him. “I can’t even tell you how much I value Lafayette as a person,” she says emphatically, and then she’s giggling and Bellamy can’t help but reach over and stuff one of her earbuds in his ear. 

“Start from the beginning, and then once we’re done giving Lafayette the love he deserves, you can turn this down and we can both go back to studying,” Bellamy prompts, and she moves to replay Guns and Ships. 

She pauses, her finger hovering over the play button. “I can’t share earbuds with someone unless I know their name. I’m Clarke, in case you feel the same way about headphones.” 

“Bellamy.” 

Clarke presses play. 

\- -

Bellamy had completely intended to go back to studying after listening to the one song with Clarke, but the transitions between the songs on Hamilton were so smooth, and he didn’t really want to stop talking to Clarke anyway. But, when his teacher handed back the test he’d failed, Bellamy got to call his super hot girlfriend and make out with her to the sounds of a eighteenth century warfare. 

He was pretty sure that was a sweet deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's short (much like james madison). it's sweet (much like eliza hamilton). it's of questionable value (like thomas jefferson).
> 
> ok enough with the hamilton references. anyways i wrote this in ten minutes because of my writers block (trying to create more things!! yay) so i hope you like it and if you haven't already listen to hamilton it changed my life and it's in my head non-stop 
> 
> thanks for reading


	6. thoughts?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the one where bellamy has a kid, clarke is a kindergarten teacher, and everything is filled with soap bubbles and happiness.

Bellamy had been late picking up his daughter before, he knew the drill. Withstand the wrath of Miss Griffin, grab the kid before they can latch onto her like a koala, and buy them ice cream on the teacher’s suggestion. Bellamy knew that other kids went through this, Eloise let him know that much. He just knew that even once a month was abnormally often for a kid to get picked up over five minutes late. 

He clocked in half an hour late at least once a week. When he came in his uniform, Miss Griffin was always more sympathetic. She’d hand his kid over with minimal fussing, and Eloise would grab his handcuffs and tug to make him laugh. It was those days that Miss Griffin handed him a painting Eloise had done in class that day, or asked him to write tomorrow’s date on the board so Eloise could tell everyone it was her dad’s handwriting. 

Bellamy knew that he was late picking up his daughter all the goddamn time, but he also knew that when he was, he didn’t rush. Miss Griffin’s wrath was something he always liked to see more of. 

\- -

“I have meetings to go to sometimes, you know,” she hissed, soft so Eloise wouldn’t look up from where she was set up with an easel. “You can’t always assume pickup time is whenever you’re ready. People’s lives go on, Bellamy!” This was long after she’d ceased to be Miss Griffin and become Clarke, long after she’d started keeping snacks for Eloise among the paintbrushes so she wouldn’t be hungry after school. 

“She spends long enough wondering if you’re going to come pick her up, I’ve seen her face when sirens go past the window.” Bellamy flinched at the things the words made him remember, coming home to Eloise and Octavia with blood under his fingernails. Neither of them had said anything, but Bellamy knew his kid wasn’t blind. She didn’t know all of it, but she picked up enough.

“I know,” Bellamy said, resigned. “I know that what I’m doing isn’t fair, to her or to you. And next year, I’m going to have to either have to trick another teacher into falling in love with my daughter or hire a babysitter I can’t afford, but for right now we’re doing okay. For the first time.”

“I’m done!” Eloise announced, marching her still-wet painting over to Bellamy. “Thoughts?”

It was a mess of dropping blobs, but Bellamy was almost positive that three of them were supposed to be people. “Is it… puffer fish?”

“No, Dad,” Eloise huffed, her face the very picture of sass. Bellamy wondered what Octavia was teaching her while he was out. She pointed at the middle blob. “That’s me, that’s you, that’s Miss Griffin.” 

“Well then you look beautiful,” Bellamy declared. When he took it home and hung it on the fridge, he realized that all three of the blobs were holding hands. 

\- -

“I am Eloise. I am six.” 

Bellamy watched his daughter drag her finger over each word, her lips soundlessly spelling out syllables before she carefully enunciated the letters. Clarke was over by her desk, gathering her things so she could go home, but Bellamy could see her smile when Eloise turned the page. 

“I am a city child. I live at the Pla- the Plaza.” 

Clarke paused by the door, the strap of her bag weighing down one shoulder, her lopsided silhouette looking more tired than usual. “You can lock up, right?” 

“Wait, Ellie wanted to ask you something,” Bellamy said quickly. Eloise’s eyes lit up, and she all but threw her book to the ground. She handed Clarke the crumpled ball of paper from her pocket, her flyaway curls everywhere but tucked in her ponytail where Bellamy had put them that morning. 

“Daddy told me which letters made what I said,” she announced as Clarke carefully unfolded and scanned the paper. 

“It used to be folded nicely, but then it went into Ellie’s pocket,” Bellamy said sheepishly. “And I don’t know if this is inappropriate, but you’ve been so-“ 

“Daddy shush! Miss Griffin is trying to read. Quiet for reading.” Bellamy was surprised at how patiently his daughter was waiting, without any bouncing around or asking for Clarke to read faster. But patience could only last so long, and moments later Eloise was tugging on the bottom of Clarke’s sleeve. “Thoughts? Thoughts?” 

“I’d love to go to dinner with you,” Clarke said, looking not at Eloise but at Bellamy. There was a moment where they both seemed to be holding their breath, their gazes locked and the air charged. Then Clarke pulled Eloise into a hug, and Bellamy was left feeling like he’d been sucker punched. “Thank you so much for the invitation, it was beautiful.” 

Eloise wasn’t the only one who was beaming on the way home. 

\- -

Clarke followed them home on Friday night in her car, after Bellamy had actually shown up on time to pick up his kid. She drove an old pickup that was in desperate need of a paint job, and she’d changed into jeans and a soft, blue t-shirt. Bellamy was trying really hard not to stare, using the dinner he was cooking as an excuse to leave her in the living room with Eloise. “This is my legos,” she was chattering. “And this is the couch.” 

By the time Bellamy had finished cooking, they’d built a castle that spanned almost the entire rug, and Eloise was designating separate quarters for each member of her Kindergarten class. At Bellamy’s shout of “dinnertime,” she was sprinting into the kitchen with Clarke in tow. 

Bellamy had Eloise seated with a bowl of chili in front of her and a napkin on her lap in record time. He’d made sure she hadn’t heaped on too much cheese, and that she knew the entire glass of milk in front of her had to disappear before dinner could be over. “Thoughts?” he asked as Eloise spooned her first bite in her mouth. 

“Good,” she chirped, showing both Bellamy and Clarke the entire contents of her mouth and proceeding to wolf down the rest of her bowl with abandon. Once most of the chili was either in her stomach or on her face, Eloise chugged her glass of milk and begged to be allowed to go finish her castle. 

When Ellie had run off, Clarke shook her head. “Remember when picking your kid up late was taboo? I miss those days.” 

“Don’t tell me you’d rather go home early and never see my beautiful face,” Bellamy joked, and Clarke finally cracked a smile. “Seriously, though, I have no idea how I’m ever going to be able to thank you enough-“ 

The phone ringing stopped both of them dead in their tracks, and when Bellamy picked it up he was immediately running to the door and pulling on his shoes. “I’m so sorry,” he told Clarke as soon as his Captain had hung up. “It’s work, an emergency, and they need me at the precinct. I’m sorry, I know I sound like an asshole, but can you-“

“I’ll watch Eloise, yeah,” Clarke said, handing him his keys from the rack next to the door. It struck Bellamy, all at once, how domestic his life had become. The keys hung up by the door, the little plaque Octavia had made that read “House of Blake,” the legos and dolls and Hotwheels scattered on the floor. And Clarke, in the midst of it all, looking like she was exactly where she belonged. 

“I’ll be back,” Bellamy said when the sense of nostalgia for something that hadn’t happened yet was over. “I promise.” 

\- -

When Bellamy got home that night, after hours of paperwork and processing, he’d half forgotten that Clarke was watching Eloise, that she’d be waiting for him when he opened the door. Seeing her curled up on his couch in a blanket, watching a muted TV and wearing a sweatshirt from his coat closet? It was the best thing to happen to him all week. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, halfway between a whisper and a rasp. 

Clarke smiled, the one she usually saved for Eloise when she finished a book. “No, I’m sorry. We ate all the ice cream.”

“Thank you so much for staying,” Bellamy went on, as if Clarke hadn’t said anything at all. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am-“

“We’re just happy you’re back,” Clarke said, interrupting.

“Yeah. Me too.” 

\- -

The day that summer vacation started, Eloise wouldn’t stop crying. Bellamy tried in vain to wipe the snot off of her lip and get her into the door for the last day festivities, but she wasn’t having any of it. “Honey, you have to go to school. Clarke’s inside, and I’ll be here to pick you up-“

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, and it started off another round of fresh sobbing. Bellamy texted Clarke to come out and see if she could drag Eloise into the classroom so he could actually get to work on time for once, and Clarke walked up to the pair of them with her hands on her hips. 

“What do we have here?” she asked as Eloise immediately stopped trying to wipe her face on the hem of Bellamy’s shirt and moved instead to Clarke’s. Together they managed to coax her onto the rug of the classroom, where Bellamy knelt down to her level. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly, swiping away Eloise’s tears with both his thumbs. “I need a painting. I’ve been having a rough morning, you know, and that’s the only thing that can cheer me up. Thoughts?” 

Eloise nodded, still hiccuping.

“Perfect,” Bellamy said, standing up and watching Eloise make her way over to the easels. 

“I can’t believe it,” Clarke said from behind him. “You say it too.” 

“Say what?” Bellamy asked, mentally scrolling back through his conversation.

“The two of you always want to know what other people are thinking.” Clarke’s hands were on Bellamy’s back, guiding him out the classroom door and into the hallway. “Go to work.” 

When Bellamy came back to pick up Eloise, thirty minutes late, Clarke met him outside her classroom and kissed him by the announcements bulletin board, fisting her hands in his shirt. “Um,” he stammered.

Clarke beamed. “Thoughts?” 

Bellamy didn’t say anything, just kissed her again and thanked God that he was an asshole who always showed up late to pick up his kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahahhahha this took me soooo long and what i have to show for all that time is this sorry piece of writing that is barely edited and might not make sense at parts but i hope you like it anyways because i had a lot of fun with eloise and her stupid hot dad.


	7. for a good time, call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I left my phone number on the bathroom stall wall and you text me about your day and your frustrations for a month & it’s really nice and cute but I still don’t know who you are” au (except it was a revenge plot by octavia and everything is adorable)

Bellamy had no idea who’d left his phone number in the girl’s bathroom under a scrawled “for a good time, call b.” 

 

Actually, he knew exactly who’d done it. Octavia was the only person in the entire school who had his phone number (well, not anymore), and he’d just told her that she wasn’t allowed to go to the party that was happening at a senior’s house on Friday night. He knew that didn’t make him a criminal, but Octavia had a different idea, and then the prank calls started rolling in.

 

He’d pick up the phone and hear giggling, way too much to be just one person, and in the beginning he would ask who it was, just in case it was something important. By the second day of this, he heard a giggle or a squeal and he hung up the goddamn phone. He was furious, especially since his phone plan didn’t have unlimited calling. Once this fact was revealed to Octavia, she’d scribbled over the number on the wall and added her ex-boyfriend’s. 

 

“He’s loaded,” she said with a shrug when Bellamy expressed concern over his wellbeing. “Plus he’s a jackass.” 

 

And everything was fine, for a while, until he got a text from an unknown number. 

 

_i had a really shitty day,_ it read. 

 

_Who is this??_ , Bellamy typed back, halfway through bullshitting a paper on The Great Gatsby. 

 

_i got your number from the bathroom wall and i can’t think of anyone else to talk to about my really shitty day that i just mentioned_

 

Bellamy let out a huff of breath, silently cursing Octavia’s insane penchant for revenge. _Do you not have friends?_

 

_they’re what made the day, ya know, really fucking terrible. wanna hear about it or not???_

 

Bellamy tried, he really did, but he couldn’t help the smile from spreading over his features. Curiosity won out as he pressed send on the next text. _Why not. Tell me about your terrible horrible no good very bad day._

 

\- -

 

They texted every day, telling Bellamy about something dumb their teacher had said in calculus, or about how they saw a buck with huge majestic antlers on their way home. He worked out slowly that she was a girl when she complained about the tax on tampons and referred to herself as an _Angry Adolescent Female™ who was broke and angry at the government_. She was bi, because she talked about drooling over both of her art teachers, the guy with the glasses and the woman who wore blue eyeshadow and _somehow pulled it off. extremely well_. And he knew that her name started with a C because _we should start a group chat with someone named alan. then, we could have a group chat and call it abc after our initials like cool kids. easy as 123._

 

\- -

 

C: _i’m actually on my way to tutor someone. geometry is a bitch, and nobody can write me a proof that proves that false, but someone needs to pay for watercolors, so._

 

“Bell, I need twenty bucks!” Octavia yelled from the couch. 

 

B: _Q.E.D._

 

“What for?” Bellamy called back, in the middle of putting the extra spaghetti in the fridge. 

 

C: _i s2g, you’re a bigger nerd than i am. i should make you tutor her._

 

“I told you, so I don’t fail math!” Octavia appeared in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, frowning at the phone in Bellamy’s hands. 

 

B: T _rust me, I’m a terrible teacher. I tried teaching my baby sister one time, and there was food on the walls by the time we were done. She didn’t learn anything other than the fact that banana sticks to the ceiling._

 

“I knew it! You’re always on the phone with this girl,” Octavia huffed, holding out her hand. “You never listen to me, but when it’s _her_ -“

 

C: _gotta go. i have arrived and need to be professional. gotta prove i’m worth $20_

 

“Shut up, O,” Bellamy said, reaching into his pocket and handing Octavia a wad of cash. “And I wasn’t in here just texting, I was cleaning the kitchen, which you never seem to want to help with…” 

 

There was a knock on the door, and Bellamy wiped his hands with the dishtowel and sent one more text before he answered it, Octavia still looking sullen with her arms folded across her chest. 

 

B: T _his sounds more like a stripping gig than tutoring geometry to me…_

 

He opened the door to find a short, blonde girl looking intently at her phone, dressed in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt. When he cleared his throat, she started and looked up, blushing.

 

“Hi,” he said gruffly. “I’m Bellamy, come on in.” 

 

“Clarke,” she answered, reaching out to shake his hand and peering over his shoulder. “Hi, Octavia. You ready?” 

 

“Yeah,” Octavia answered, placing her binder on the table and shooting a stern look at Bellamy. “You can finish your text, don’t let my brother scare you.” 

 

Clarke laughed, settling down in the chair next to Octavia and going back to typing. 

 

C: _if strippers show up in harvard gear to try and impress gruff older brothers then yeah, i guess it’s a lot like a stripping gig. maybe i should switch professions._

 

Clarke looked up at the ding of Bellamy’s text tone, smiling, and that was when it clicked. 

 

“Holy shit,” he breathed, and both girls turned to stare at him.

 

“What now, Bell?” Octavia groaned, but Bellamy had already turned back to his phone. 

 

B: I _s the “gruff older brother” by any chance looking at you reeeeallly weird right now?_

 

Clarke’s phone buzzed, and Octavia clapped a hand over her mouth. 

 

C: _yeah. how did u know???? don’t tell me you’re psychic AND an asshole_

 

“Nah,” Bellamy replied. “Just an asshole.” 

 

That was when Clarke started grinning.

 

\- -

 

On the day Bellamy graduated, he woke up to an incessant amount of dings coming from his phone. 

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _wake up egghead_

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _your sister passed geometry and you managed to pass high school_

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _after you finish thanking me profusely, i’m gonna take you out to breakfast_

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _be ready in ten_

 

ew its bellamy: _If you really love me you’ll let me go back to sleep and take me out for lunch instead._

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _well then, looks like we’re going to breakfast. i’ve been faking being in love with you the whole time._

 

ew its bellamy: _You wound me._

 

Clarkes the best thing thats ever happened to me: _i try_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol this happened in literally 20 minutes. i hope you enjoy. been rly feeling the fluff lately bc 3.03 (not even gonna get started i can't talk about it anymore)
> 
> hope you like it, leave me a lil comment cause i wanna chat w you about how much i love writing sassy clarke


	8. the hot cousin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i was bored and feeling the "octavia texts the crew and does some matchmaking"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the formatting might be weird??? idk octavia is on the right. like a phone would be. 
> 
> hope u like it

_12/3/15_

**hot gym guy**

i actually cannot believe that you know clarke

 

Why is that so unbelievable? 

 

ummm maybe bc bell has been in love with her for like ever

 

Your brother is in love with my cousin’s ex-girlfriend.

 

fucking head over heels

 

Did you have to send a screenshot of this conversation to your brother that hates me?

 

Also why am I still “hot gym guy” in your phone? We live together, it’s getting ridiculous.

 

shut up its for posterity

 

how did u not tell me of this whole clarke situation until now?????? i thought you loved me

 

I do love you. Clarke and Lexa imploded spectacularly and I was never close to my cousin.

 

She’s scary.

 

ur a wimp ok

 

**the bro**

 

lincoln knows clarke

 

You’re kidding

 

i’m not

 

More details please

 

yeah. she dated his hot cousin. 

 

p sure that’s the “bad breakup story” she always mentions when shes drunk

 

Oh. 

 

Lincoln knows Lexa?

 

YOU know lexa???? 

 

I got the whole story a while ago. Still giving her space to heal and shit.

 

????how????why???

 

Tequila

 

makes sense

 

**clarke motherfucking badass griffin**

 

why was i not informed of the fact that you know my boyfriend???

 

you have many boys that are friends with you

 

i know most of them

 

boyfriend. no spaces. 

 

to which boyfriend are you referring?

 

lincoln woods

 

memory refresher pls

 

hot. tattoos. rides a motorcycle. in love with me.

 

oh, the one bellamy hates

 

so did you or did you not date his hot cousin

 

i think her name is lexa??

 

we are not talking about this.

 

why not

 

clarke????

 

??????????????????

 

omg text me back

 

**the bro**

 

clarke is mad at me

 

What now?

 

i asked about lincolns hot cousin

 

I thought I raised you right

 

What went wrong

 

I’m a terrible older brother

 

don’t be dramatic all i wanted to do was see why you’re giving her "space to heal and shit” 

 

Maybe because she’s emotionally vulnerable and I’m not trying to be an asshole?

 

ugh

 

_12/7/15_

 

**clarke motherfucking badass griffin**

 

are u still in that art show??

 

lincoln wants to drive down a friend of his is opening a restaurant 

 

yeah, it opens on saturday night

 

is bellamy going cause i feel like hes gonna be mad if i spend most of the visit without him

 

he’s helping set up. i can’t actually lift all the pieces and he’s tall.

 

is he staying for the show too

 

i think he’s more excited about it than i am

 

you guys are so domestic

 

see you then

 

no i’m taking you out to lunch beforehand so you’ll see me at 12:30

 

k!!!!

 

**the bro**

 

you’re helping her set up her art show

 

dude ask her out this is pathetic

 

you’re so fucking whipped

 

Leave me alone, please. 

 

fine whatever. see you saturday.

 

Love you

 

same

 

 

 

_12/12/15_

 

**the bro**

 

dude. stop looking at her like like you’re in love

 

i mean, i know you are, but. it’s obvious.

 

I’m not looking at her like anything. I’m looking at her like I always look at her

 

you’re looking at her like she hung the moon or invented toaster strudel

 

if that’s how you look at her all the time i’m surprised people don’t mistake you for the plot of a dumb fucking romcom

 

oh, wait. they already do.

 

Shut up and look at the paintings. 

 

i can’t. none of them make sense and i’m bored. 

 

do any of them make sense to you??

 

Nah. 

 

yeah it’s like

 

picasso and andy warhol had a baby

 

but it hated its parents so it had a crisis

 

and then just did emo shit on a canvas for the rest of its life

 

Am currently being supportive, please stop texting.

 

you know i’m right

 

you’re looking at her like that right now

 

it’s even more pathetic in real time

 

**hot gym guy**

 

My friend with the restaurant also knows Clarke

 

this has gotta be some kind of sick cosmic joke

 

??how

 

They went to college together. He knows Lexa, too. Says they broke up because she went to school somewhere far away without telling Clarke. 

 

ouch

 

I have an asshole for a cousin, is the main point.

 

 

fuck

 

bellamy is so dumb

 

shit!!!

 

What is happening right now

 

tell u later

 

_12/13/15_

 

**the bro**

 

i gave you some time

 

now what do you have to say for yourself

 

don’t worry, i’m not driving, lincoln is

 

I think you’re crazy

 

i think you’re using the fact that you “might” take a job far away as an excuse to not go for it with clarke when in actuality you’re being a coward and not acting on the feelings you’ve fostered for a very long time and kept even when you guys lived on separate ends of the world. and now you live in the same place but you won’t get over yourself on the off chance that you decide to go somewhere else when i know you won’t because leaving clarke is the one thing you’ll never ever do

 

That was the longest text you have ever sent me

 

And it’s complete and utter bullshit

 

think about it!!!!

 

you’re trying to tell me that bc lexa moved away and broke her heart you’re not going to even go for it

 

This has nothing to do with Lexa

 

then what is it

 

I like what we have

 

no you don’t

 

I do

 

you like the moments when she touches your shoulder when she walks past you

 

you like when she cuddles next to you when you watch documentaries

 

you like when you wake up first and make her coffee and she stumbles into the kitchen chasing the smell

 

you like the moments when you can pretend it’s more

 

How the fuck do you know all of this?

 

i save all your drunk voicemails

 

anyways. date her right now. you’re pissing me off.

 

_12/16/15_

 

**clarke motherfucking badass griffin**

 

what did you say to your brother

 

told him to get his head out of his ass

 

why

 

cool thanks

 

WHY

 

CLARKE WHY I’M DYING 

 

ARE YOU HAVING SEX RIGHT NOW??

 

IS THAT WHY YOU WON’T ANSWER ME???

 

EW BELLAMY GROSS 

 

CLARKE WHAT HAPPENED

 

claAAaAaaaaAAARKE

 

_12/17/15_

 

**the bro**

 

bellamy

 

!!!!!!!!!!

 

bell

 

a

 

my

 

hello from the outside

 

OMG TALK TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

You’re a fucking menace, you know that?

 

ANSWER MY TEXTS

 

WHATS GOING ON

 

Your stupid meddling worked.

 

You’re not even gonna comment on that??

 

sorry. just got back from dancing around my street and yelling to the whole neighborhood

 

you owe me like 1000000000$ tbh

 

Shut up you owe me your life

 

touché

 

 

_12/20/15_

 

**the bro**

 

you’re bringing clarke over for christmas right

 

Yeah. She doesn’t want to hang out with her mom

 

also you’re dating and you’re in love, but yeah. use that excuse.

 

Why are you asking me dumb questions

 

lincolns very large very extended family is coming over for christmas dinner

 

and he has some hot cousins that might be an issue

 

I thought she was in Germany

 

people don’t stay abroad for christmas bell

 

I asked Clarke, she’s fine

 

correction!!! 

 

i said: fuck her and her dumb perfect eyeliner cuz my life is way better now than it ever was when she was in it. healthy relationships are the shit ok -clarke

 

^^^^^too real

 

**hot gym guy**

 

Is my cousin going to ruin Christmas

 

nah my brother and his dumb girlfriend are fine

 

gross. but just fine. 

 

i take all the credit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this probs isn't good. and maybe it made no sense. but i miss fun octavia bc season 3 is making my life hard and i just want all my babies to have cell phones and not be in a war zone and make out with each other so here this is.


	9. make small the old star eaten blanket of the sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a tiny drabble written for the march flash fic contest on bff.net (prompt: dreams, 300 words) 
> 
> anyways its full of universe metaphors and stuff i wish was canon so enjoy

“Do they look different from down here?” Clarke asks, and Bellamy turns his head ever so slightly to see her hair splayed out around her head like a halo, the blonde strands mingling with the blades of grass. 

“What do you mean?” Bellamy says, squinting at the sky. He knows exactly what she’s talking about, he just can’t give her an answer. He hadn’t been looking at the stars, he’d been looking at something more beautiful. 

Clarke sighs. “I mean, we saw them out of the window for years. But it seems different, now. Bigger.” 

Bellamy watches Clarke take a deep breath and blink, deliberate, as if each time she closed her eyes she would find a new image projected in the constellations. “I don’t know,” he replies, and it’s not enough. “I guess I never thought about it, with everything going on.”

There’s a tear in Clarke’s eye, and it streaks its way across her cheek and onto the ground like a comet burning its way through the atmosphere. “I thought the ground was going to be beautiful,” she whispered, her voice thick with the past. “Rivers, and trees, and the stars, back in the sky where they belong. I didn’t imagine all the death.” 

Without thinking, Bellamy reaches for her, gripping her hand as though his touch could keep the stars wrapped around them like a blanket. “I used to dream about the stars, when we landed,” he confesses. “They were always following us to the ground, and we were always dying.”

Clarke doesn’t reply, just stares straight up towards the sky.

“I don’t dream about them anymore,” Bellamy says, and his fingers finally intertwine with Clarke’s. “I dream about you.”

And she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have been in hiding for a while bc it seems like i can never write anything. which sucks. so i thought i'd pop this in here to try and motivate myself. it's short and i hope you liked it


	10. after everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a future canonverse thing where bellamy and clarke are together like i love them to be

There is the way that the waves recede from the shore, reluctant, only to crash back again in a violent reunion of worn out sand and churning water salty with tears. 

There is the way that the stars rip holes into the sky every night, tear their way through the atmosphere in a burning attempt to reach the earth, and are gone by morning. 

And then, there is her. 

\- -

It isn’t a question that Bellamy will give her the space in his life, the time in his day. The sky can’t keep out the stars, not when night’s approaching, and Bellamy is tired of refusing to let her in. It’s been too much, they both know, but they’ve both managed to come out of it alive. Barely.

And when he finds her outside of his door, blue-lipped, with almost frozen tears adorning her cheeks, he gives in. The little piece of his heart reserved for her, reserved for Clarke, shudders a little in its remembering. This is it, Bellamy thinks, and when he reaches out her hands are cold. 

“I came to say-“ she starts, and that’s when Bellamy laughs a little. Just a little, the deep rumble inside of him, unfamiliar inside his chest. “Let me finish, please.” 

“You’ve said enough,” Bellamy decides, firm enough that Clarke stops speaking, but still gentle. Making sure she isn’t scared away. “We’ve all apologized enough. We’ll never be done apologizing.” 

And that’s when the crying starts again, the way it always is with Clarke. The way she tries to hold it in, the way she stops breathing and moving altogether until the tears streaming down her face become inevitable, and the dam breaks into shoulder heaving sobs. Bellamy knows that the only thing to do is to pull her into him, crush her against his chest and his collarbone and his neck. Tangle his hands in her hair. 

Her lips, where they press into the hollow of his throat, are cold, and there’s snot and tears collecting on the neckline of his shirt. “I’m not ready,” she whispers, and Bellamy almost doesn’t understand. “I’m not ready to stop surviving.” 

“Who is?” 

\- -

From then on, Clarke is never without Bellamy. Bellamy hasn’t become a guard again, he can’t, but he teaches the younger kids from the Ark about history. Not the kind he learned in school, about Unity Day and the first Chancellor, but the kind his mother taught him. Stories of creation, of the mountains erupting from the earth, of the horses clawing their way out of sea foam, of the heroes drawn in the stars. 

When Clarke finishes her shift in the hospital, she sits cross legged among the children and listens, remembering. Sometimes it’s her father, spinning her around with joy when she got home from class. Sometimes it’s Wells, the little notes he’d pass during boring lectures and the way his hand felt in hers when the teacher led them from one classroom to another. But, most often, it’s just memories of the way she used to feel. Warm, and content. They’re the nicest things she’s remembered in a long time. 

Bellamy gets days off from teaching twice a week, and those are the days that he’s in the clinic with her. He smiles at the patients, chats softly with each one about how they’re feeling, what they’re looking forward to when they’re better. The kids that come in for checkups call him Mr. Bellamy, and it makes Clarke smile. 

“Is this normal?” Clarke asks as she walks Bellamy back from his afternoon class. They’re walking a loop of Arkadia, checking the defenses out of the corner of their eyes, an unbreakable habit. 

“Define ‘this’,” Bellamy says, and her fingers are twined with his. 

“I don’t know.” Clarke gestures, at the walls and the grass and the air surrounding them. “This. Life.” 

“Oh,” Bellamy clarifies with a small sigh. “Our life.”

“I mean,” Clarke says, and there’s hope in the breath she takes, “I mean that maybe I can finally stop waiting for something to go wrong. Maybe this is what we get.”

Bellamy stops walking. “I think,” he says slowly, “this is what we deserve.” 

Clarke ducks her head, and he feels her squeeze his hand. Her hair hides a smile. “This is good,” she says, and it doesn’t sound like she’s trying to convince herself anymore. “This is good.” 

And, after everything, that seems like enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I NEEDED TO POST SOMETHING SO I POSTED THIS. 
> 
> disclaimer: i wrote this during a free period in school. it was 25 minutes long and this isn't polished at all. BUT my writers block has been insufferable so anyways this had to happen i hope you liked it k bye


	11. in this lifetime of sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based on the single word "revolution" for the april flash fic competition on bff.net
> 
> aka bellamy and clarke have met each other in a million lifetimes, and there is always war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha ok so this was a thing that i wrote for a competition and u should all go check out all the other fics people wrote for it bc they were so good!!!! everyone who contributed was amazing and shower them with love and praise please and thank u

In their first life, he is from Babylon. Her empire is slowly squeezing the life out of him and his people, and when they meet he has a knife to her throat. He’s pressing her into an alcove meant for praying when he recognizes her, suddenly, as the daughter of an invading general. She recognizes him for a different reason, one that leaves her breathless. 

She bleeds out with the recognition reflecting in her eyes, and with it his spirit for revolution. 

Next she is a Vietnamese princess and he is her guard. The fall in love amongst the revolution, and he bleeds out in her arms, the sword of a Chinese soldier in his stomach. Her fingers are carding through his hair when he dies, whispering just her name: princess.

It doesn’t sound like just her status. It sounds like more. 

They meet in millions of lives, millions of rebellions filled with ashes and an overwhelming sense of hope. He’s a samurai and she’s a palace servant, she’s the daughter of a Scottish lord and he’s fighting for her independence. They’re Filipino rebels fighting against the Spanish, slave and owner in the American Civil War, protesters in the streets of Egypt. 

In every lifetime there is a breath, a single heartbeat where they look at each other and they know. Oh, her soul says. I’ve been waiting for you. 

In every lifetime, they fight. For freedom, for religion, for equality. It ends in tragedy, or it ends in triumph. But it always ends together. 

The last time they meet, it’s after an age of nuclear war. In this life, he’s Bellamy and she’s Clarke. They’re tired, and broken, but their legacy is not. In this revolution, they are Princess and the Rebel King, and their souls are fully awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> k cool so i know this was short but let's be real i could probably expand the HELL out of it so if you want to read like a better, developed version of this without a word limit let me know and i can write it!!! if you don't that's also fine, less effort for me lol.
> 
> thanks for reading and come chat with me in the comments i promise i'm a cool person


	12. coming up roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the one where bellamy, clarke, and octavia get the happy ending they deserve (aka they take the best nap of their puny little lives on a couch and have heart to hearts)
> 
> all fluff, no plot. fight me.

When Octavia came to Clarke complaining over a boy who sat in front of her in physics, Clarke was ecstatic. Octavia was bemoaning the amount of true injustice of the situation, that she stared at the back of his head all day and he never seemed to notice her. 

 

It was nothing short of a miracle- he list of injustice the universe had done to the Blake family was long, and each item was enough tragedy for a lifetime. But this one, this horror, was one the little problems that seems like the end of the world to nobody but a teenager. Only happy kids had problems like these, and Clarke was proud. Of Bellamy, and of herself, for creating this girl that could wear her heart on her sleeve and think that this meaningless boy from school was the most important part of her life. 

 

“It never stops,” Octavia moaned, her head on Clarke’s lap. Clarke ran her fingers through the younger girl’s hair, smoothing out knots and weaving together strands. “Do you love Bellamy, like, all the time?” 

 

“Yeah,” Clarke said, thoughtful. “Sometimes I don’t like him very much, but that’s not the same thing.” 

 

“Isn’t it exhausting?” Octavia huffed with the kind of intensity only a teenager can manage. 

 

“You know the pain you get in your legs after you’ve spent an entire day standing, once you climb into bed and you’re just about to fall asleep?” Octavia nodded, her eyes closed, and Clarke continued. “It’s like that. It makes me ache, but it’s the good kind.”

 

“Oh,” Octavia said, and her bottom lip stuck out. “That’s not how I feel.” 

 

“Give it time,” Clarke said, soothing, and Octavia’s eyes fluttered closed. Images of Bellamy hurling insults and smirking his way right into her bad graces and her heart flashed through her mind. And then, the first time she’d seen his real smile, soft and tentative and nothing but goodness. “Everything’s gonna come up roses.” 

 

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Octavia said softly, turning her head so she was nuzzling against Clarke’s wrist. Clarke’s breath caught in her throat as she watched Octavia fall asleep, the younger girl draped across her lap. She blinked away the tears that pricked behind her eyes, and in doing so she nodded off herself. 

 

Bellamy walked into his living room after work completely ready to spend the entire night grumpy and out of sorts. Instead, he was greeted with the image of the two people he loved most in the world slumped over on his favorite spot on the couch. Octavia was snoring softly, and only Clarke woke up at the sound of Bellamy swinging the door shut behind him. 

 

“Hi,” she said, and Bellamy felt all of the tension in his shoulders slip away at the sight of her smiling cheeks, creased with the pattern of the couch. “There’s a boy in physics that doesn’t notice her.” 

 

“Thank God it’s you who dealt with that,” Bellamy said, dropping his keys on the counter. “I spent too many years trying to tell her punch any boys that came close.” 

 

Clarke looked down at Octavia again, at the soft lines of her face, still round with youth. “You made something really good here,” she told him. 

 

Bellamy felt a crack he’d never known was in his heart sew itself up. “You helped,” he said, his voice low. He settled into the space beside his sister, lifting his legs so Clarke could slide her feet underneath. 

 

“I’m really happy,” Clarke told him, reaching for his hands. “In case you didn’t know.” 

 

“Well I’m happier, ” Bellamy said. Clarke grinned, and that was all it took for Bellamy to revise his belief that he couldn’t possibly love her more. 

 

“Go to sleep, asshole.” 

 

When Octavia woke up, Bellamy was passed out next to her, one of his hands covered by both of Clarke’s. There was a smile on both of their sleeping faces, and Octavia made a face of her own as she pried herself off of Clarke carefully. But Clarke had always been a light sleeper, and she blinked slowly as Octavia extracted her hair from under Clarke’s cheek. 

 

“You feel better?” she asked softly, and Octavia couldn’t help but smile. 

 

As she looked over Bellamy and Clarke, tangled together on the couch, there was a space that looked empty. It was the space she’d just come from, the space she knew was just for her. It was there, waiting, and it always would be.

 

“Yeah, I think so.” 

 

A smile stretched over Clarke’s features, and her eyes blinked closed again. “I told you,” she muttered as she went back to sleep. “Roses.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i keep doing this!! and by this, i mean writing stuff that has no plot and no purpose and really nothing to offer because i need to WRITE and FINISH STUFF but i don't want to have to commit to long stuff so i just toss it on here like whatever and i don't even know if its good or not and im not sure if i care???
> 
> i don't know what i'm doing. validate me with kudos or comments, or come hang with me and my misery on tumblr (emullz/officialbellarketrash) and lmk if there's something you want me to write. thanks for reading, and i hope you enjoyed the product of nothing but my severe, months long, never ending writer's block. xoxo


	13. as you can see i've got biceps to spare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written in 10 minutes for the february flash fic competition on the bellarkefanfiction tumblr. it's about nothing, for the prompt "hero"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't been writing anything at all recently because i've been actually obsessed with this one fic i've been writing for over a year that i can't finish. and, so, to punch that fear in the face, i'm posting this 300 word ficlet in the hopes that it will restore my enthusiasm for this fandom and for fanfic in general. 
> 
> sorry i'm placing all my hopes on you. enjoy.

Clarke almost lost it when he winked. But he hadn’t winked at her, had he? Clarke fingered her Playbill again where it was open to his headshot. He was gorgeous, like he was supposed to be, but playing Gaston on Broadway did not mean that Bellamy Blake had to toy with the audience like that.

Clarke didn’t usually do Broadway, but her mother had said this was the thing to do in New York City, that when Clarke visited her from LA she had to go see a show. And then Abby had insisted on paying for the tickets herself and subsequently cancel, and here Clarke was sitting in the third row getting winked at by Gaston. 

This was not at all usual, Clarke noted with a start during intermission. She was always attracted to the hero of the story: Thor, Nancy Drew, the cartoon version of Robin Hood. This particular villain should have no hold over her, not after her long history with the righteous. And, yet. There was something in the way he held his pitchfork and railed against feminism that couldn’t keep her from thinking about his hand, and his lips, and-

Clarke swallowed her shame. She waited at stage door. 

“Oh, good,” he said when he emerged to find her halfway through deciding to leave. “I was worried you’d think it was just part of the performance.” 

“Do you usually flirt with audience members when you’re supposed to be doing your job?” Clarke asked, grinning in spite of herself. 

“Only when they roll their eyes at the very sight of me, which you managed beautifully. Can I buy you a drink?”


	14. rough all over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i love the outsiders more than probably anything else in this mortal world!!! so this is that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you haven't read the outsiders go do it immediately. if you have, proceed to this fanfiction and enjoy!

Clarke Griffin was someone that Bellamy admired from afar, the girl in his biology class who was two years ahead in science and wore pretty blue dresses. She peered into her microscope with a look of unashamed curiosity, she’d raised her hand to object to the “obvious animal cruelty that led to dissection,” and she would smile at him when he got a question right in a way that nobody from her side of town ever had before.

 

She was everywhere else, too, at the Nightly Double on Fridays after school, sipping a Coke at the Dropship, laughing uproariously on a park bench while he played football with Miller. Bellamy saw her wherever he went, and she always had a smile for him, a quick greeting and a kind word. She wasn’t like anyone else he’d met, the way she discarded the fact that she was a Soc and he was a Greaser as easily as breathing. And yet she was always caught up in it, the social circles and the school government and the high society look. She always had braids in her blonde hair, pearls around her wrist, a well-dressed friend at her side. No matter when or where Bellamy caught her eye, she was the Princess of the Socs, wearing her crown in the tilt of her chin and the lines of her smile. 

 

So it was a huge surprise to Bellamy when her baby blue nail tapped his shoulder after biology, when her teeth let go of her lip and she asked, cautiously, whether he could give her some help with her history class. “It’s not that I don’t find it interesting,” she told him, “it’s just that the names slip out of my head as soon as I hear them because the teacher doesn’t give a shit, and I, um, I heard you’re good at this stuff and I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.” 

 

Bellamy looked up at her, still sitting at his desk with his books scattered in front of him. Instead of answering, he started gathering his things, shoving them into his bag to strategically avoid the hole that had opened up in the bottom. When he stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder, Clarke was still standing in front of him looking hopeful. “It would be tutoring, so I could pay you. And we could meet wherever and whenever you wanted, I’m flexible and really desperate for help.” 

 

“I guess,” Bellamy said gruffly, focusing on the floor instead of getting caught up in the blue of her eyes yet again. “I get off work early on Thursday, we can meet in the library.” 

 

Clarke’s face fell for a moment, and then she fixed her expression back into its usual smile. “Sounds good. See you then?” 

 

Bellamy nodded curtly, watching Clarke turn on her heel and walk into the hallway, hugging her books to her chest and already calling a greeting to one of the other Socs that populated the halls. When he stood up, his math textbook slipped halfway out of the bottom of his bag and he simply sighed, gathered it up into his arms, and walked quickly out of the class with his head down, his only objective to get out fast enough to avoid the well dressed boys lining the lockers, looking for a fight. 

 

* * *

 

“You’re going to let her pay you to talk her ear off about ancient civilizations?” Octavia asked, flicking the ash from her cigarette onto the asphalt. Bellamy gave her a terse yes, too concentrated on the underside of the car he was working on to tell Octavia to stop smoking. “How much?”

 

“I don’t know, Octavia, she asked me and I said yes and then she left. I can’t read minds.” Bellamy emerged from under the car just in time to catch Octavia’s eyes rolling. “I’ll go, I’ll try and help her not be totally brain dead like the rest of the Socs, and maybe I’ll use the money to get you that jacket you wanted.” 

 

Octavia sighed. “We’re going to get groceries first, but we’re not gonna be able to afford them either if you don’t actually start fixing the cars instead of talking to me.” She leaned down and further smudged the grease on his face with her thumb. 

 

Bellamy rolled himself back under the car and heard his sister’s boots stomping out of the garage. Octavia called a quick goodbye to Miller and Raven, who both yelled something incoherent back, and Bellamy told her to stay out of trouble like he did every time she left his line of sight. Her response was “I won’t get caught,” like it always was, and it made Bellamy feel oddly fond of his shitty apartment and his inability to pay for heating in the winter, like it always did. 

 

Their lack of money, status as Greasers, and permanent membership into the scum of society club was what created Octavia. And now they had enough to eat and Clarke Griffin was going to pay him too much money for something he probably would’ve done for free. 

* * *

 

 

After the first session, Bellamy decided he’d been wrong. He wasn’t getting paid enough, and he wanted to quit. At every possible opportunity, Clarke had contradicted him. First it was his explanation of the Allegory of the Cave, then it was whether or not Socrates used hemlock to commit suicide or some other random herb. It was always something, and Bellamy almost walked out on several occasions. Clarke always managed to talk him back under the pretense that she was going to fail her next test without his help, or that nobody else she knew would talk to her about it and she was really confused on the way the Greeks applied democracy in different cities, and it was always just enough to put him back in his seat. 

 

“Why are you even doing this?” Octavia asked the fifth time Bellamy came home from a tutoring session fuming. 

 

“She says she’ll fail if I don’t,” Bellamy replied, exasperated as he collapsed on the couch. Murphy, who never seemed to be at his own house, smirked. 

 

“Who gives a shit? I say we let the royalty fall from grace.” Murphy swiped his hair out of his eyes and reached for the box of cookies Bellamy was carrying. Bellamy slapped his hand away and offered the box to Octavia. 

 

“She gave me cookies for you,” he announced, and Octavia was chewing and murmuring her appreciation within seconds. 

 

“You can keep her,” she declared, mouth full of crumbs, and Bellamy scowled and brushed them off the couch and onto the floor.

 

“It’s not up to you,” he said, and then told her to vacuum when she was done eating. When she asked why Bellamy raised his eyebrows. “Just because the social worker doesn’t come for another week doesn’t mean we can’t keep the house clean.”

 

Murphy snorted and Bellamy heard Octavia swear at him as he went into his room and collapsed on the bed. What he hadn’t told Octavia was that Clarke had stopped him in the hallway that day to give him the cookies, in front of two of her rich, giggling girlfriends. “I was going to give these to you later,” she’d said, “but it turns out we have to take our Calculus posters home today and I can’t carry both.”

 

The girls behind her were dressed nicely; one of them even had a bow in her hair. It reminded Bellamy of a fierce Octavia in elementary school, using a frayed bit of Bellamy’s old sweatshirt sleeves to tie up her hair. She knew pretty early on that she wasn’t a Soc and she never would be, but this was before that, when she thought everyone on the playground was he friend. This girl’s bow, and her vapid smile, and her simpering attitude, reminded Bellamy why he hated and everything Clarke stood for. 

 

The feeling hadn’t gone away by the time he got to the library for tutoring. Nobody had ever yelled at him for failing a class or getting suspended for a fight he didn’t start. His reward for passing his classes and staying out of trouble was guardianship of his sister, not a red convertible for his birthday and a new diamond ring every time his report card came back. Clarke had everything he worked so hard for right in front of her without even trying, and here he was giving up his free time twice a week to help her. Bellamy knew he’d snapped a little too hard at Clarke this time, and he wanted to desperately not to care, but he did.

 

On the way out, he thought about throwing the cookies in the trash, but she’d written “For Octavia” in looping cursive on top of the tin foil covering, and he couldn’t do it. He didn’t want her charity, but these weren’t his to reject. 

 

The tutoring sessions were, though, and when he worked a shift at the garage instead ofshowing up on Thursday night, Clarke called his house. Octavia picked up, handing Bellamy her cigarette and raising her eyebrows when he closed his eyes and took a long drag. “No, he’s not here,” she said without him having to ask. “If I knew where he was why would I tell you?”

 

He’d thought that would be the end of it, but she cornered him in school on Friday, tapping him on the shoulder after Biology just like old times. Her nails were a light green this time, and when Bellamy spun around in his chair he saw they were the exact same color as her earrings. 

 

“Where were you last night?” she asked. Her hair was braided back away from her face in a complicated style that Octavia would’ve known the name of but that baffled Bellamy. 

 

“Out,” he said, determined to keep his side of the conversation as monosyllabic as possible. 

 

Clarke blinked. “Well I waited for an hour in the library,” she said, “and it would have been nice for you to at least cancel so I’m not sitting around like an idiot.” 

 

“I’m not going to apologize for picking up an extra shift at work.” Bellamy glared at his hands, annoyed that she’d already made him break his rule. 

 

“I’m not asking you to,” Clarke continued stubbornly. “If Thursdays don’t work we can move the time—“

 

“It’s not about Thursdays!” Bellamy snapped, getting out of his chair and shoving his books into his bag. The hole at the bottom had widened and Bellamy cursed himself for not fixing it. “There are no nights that are good for me. I can’t do this anymore, and even if I could I wouldn’t want to.”

 

“What do you mean you don’t want to?” Clarke asked.

 

“I mean I’m tired of you acting like I’m doing you this huge favor and then paying me way too much money and treating me like some sort of charity case! You bake cookies for my sister and ask me how I’m doing like I’m a community service project for you to write about in your college applications. If you really want to help me you’ll ask one of your boyfriends from the right side of the tracks to do your homework for you and leave me the hell alone.” 

 

“Fine,” Clarke said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. By the time she got into the hallway, however, Bellamy noticed that her eyes were dry and she was smiling at the girl with the bow in her hair, her green-tipped fingers waving her over so they could walk home to the East Side together. 

* * *

 

 

They avoided each other in school until it let out for summer two months later. Bellamy thought he was finally rid of her, and then her car started making funny noises and she brought it in to get fixed. “I asked for Raven,” she said when Bellamy showed up to look under the hood, and he didn’t meet her eyes.

 

“She’s not working right now,” Bellamy responded, terse, and held out his hands for her keys. “You can go, so long as you leave your number with Octavia or Murphy, whoever’s at the desk.”

 

Clarke sighed. “I’ll stay here. Murphy scares me.”

 

“Murphy’s an idiot,” Bellamy said, turning the key in the ignition and listening to the whine of the engine. “You really don’t have to stay.”

 

“I missed you,” Clarke said, so quiet Bellamy almost didn’t catch it. And then, a little louder, “I passed history. It was a fluke, though, the only thing I know about the Peloponnesian War is how to spell it.” 

 

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy said, climbing out of the car and wiping his face with his sleeve. “You _missed_ me? We’re not even friends.”

 

“I don’t know, I thought we were.” There was a moment where it looked like Bellamy was going to get his way and Clarke was going to leave, but Clarke steeled herself and pressed on. “It never felt like charity to me, you know. You used to look at me sometimes in Biology, and everyone always said that you argued so much in World History that they forced you out of the class and into an elective, and I was looking for a tutor. It wasn’t supposed to be—okay, I did pay you more than I would’ve paid someone else from school, but that’s just my mom thought I was getting help from a college student and that’s the rate they all charge, it I didn’t deserve the extra cash, especially since you were doing all the work.”

 

Bellamy raised his eyebrows. “Are you done?”

 

“I just wanted you to know what was actually going on. And to let you know that I’m taking a summer Philosophy course, and nobody there will argue with me, so if you want I’ll be in the library at 6 on Mondays and Wednesdays. And I won’t even offer to pay you.” Clarke pushed her hair behind her ears, and Bellamy noticed that the only polish on her nails was clear. “Think about it,” she said, and then walked in to give her phone number at the desk. 

 

Come Monday night, Bellamy was in the library being shushed by the librarian for yelling about Nietzsche. After her last day of classes, he finally plucked up the nerve to ask her if they could continue their conversation over dinner. She laughed and kissed him right there in the middle of the library, and the librarian banned them for a month. Neither Clarke nor Bellamy really minded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahhaha okay so i missed bellarke and i haven't posted anything in a million yrs!!! this has been sitting on my computer since probably 2015 and it was half finished so i whipped up a quick ending and i am now sending it into the cloud to be viewed without editing most of it bc i can't be bothered!!!! so if it sounds funky in the middle it's because 15 year old emily and 18 year old emily are AT WAR, their writing styles are fighting each other in an epic battle to see who can use the most pretentious string of adjectives and they're both winning. 
> 
> so, anyways, hope you liked this. tell me if you did and if you didn't, because i'm always ready to Improve My Writing™!!!!
> 
> ok bye have a great day

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! please motivate me by asking me to write the prompts that you yourself are too lazy to write and i will write them for you bc i am a piece of trash with nothing else to do (plus i love my dumb delinquents)


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